Friday, July 08, 2005

EMF Was Right

Some guy from TNR (uggh, I guess I have to give a link) interviewed a bunch of conservative "thinkers" to see what they think of evolution, intelligent creationism, and their respective places in public education.

On the one hand, it's quite funny to read the twistings, wafflings, misdirections, and buffoonery (yes, even Pat "turning Nixon in for impeachable offenses was traitorous" Buchanan's quoted) of these luminaries. However, as is all too typical of publications such as TNR, the author cedes the language of the debate to the conservatives and/or creationsists. Here's the big question he puts to these guys: "Do you believe in evolution?"

Here's a newsflash. Nobody should believe in evolution. You believe in love, you believe in your religion, you believe in humanity, you believe in aliens. Belief is specifically for the things that you can't prove but that you think are true.

You don't believe in gravity, you don't believe in the Pythagorean theorem (haven't typed that in, well, ever), you don't believe in nuclear fusion, you don't believe in evolution. You accept or reject; you agree or disagree. You explain your position not by citing personal beliefs but by using provable, transparent, tangible evidence (before the post-modernity of the cultural conservative movement became dominant, these things were called "facts").

Evolution is a scientific theory. It should not be treated as a religion (as some folks seem to do), and it should not be discussed as such. If you start out talking about it as a belief, you're already more than half way to dismissing it as a science.